2of 2Copy photo of Jonathen Santellana. Jonathen Santellana was killed by an off-duty Navasota police officer, who was not wearing a uniform when he pointed a gun at Santellana while he was sitting in his car. Thinking he was being robbed at gunpoint, the youth put the car in reverse and the officer shot him. This officer was one of 47 officers cleared by grand juries last year. ( Family photo )Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

Harris County grand juries cleared every officer whose shooting of a resident was presented to them for review in 2014, suggesting that a longstanding pattern of clearing Houston Police Department officers extends to the county's other law enforcement agencies.

Last year, local grand juries chose not to charge 47 officers from nine agencies, including 20 cases in which civilians died and 19 other cases involving wounded civilians, according to Harris County District Attorney's Office records. Those decisions ensured the officers were never tried in any of the cases.

Civil rights groups and defense attorneys criticized the ongoing pattern of local grand jury decisions, while the city's largest police union strongly defended its officers.

Carmen Roe, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, criticized the practice of prosecutors not recommending charges when they present a police shooting to a grand jury. Prosecutors typically seek indictments in other cases.

"Those are incredibly troubling numbers that clearly indicate what we should now all recognize is a flawed grand jury system. It's hard to say we don't have a problem with numbers like that," said Roe. "Cases that never see the inside of a courtroom … cannot produce just results for anyone."

Ray Hunt, president of the Houston Police Officers' Union, said HPD officers shot 27 civilians in 2014, up from 25 in 2013 and 23 in 2012. Hunt attributed the increase to a rising number of calls for service that put officers in harm's way.

"The more contacts that the police have, the more likely it is you're going to encounter a violent suspect," said Hunt. "Would we like for that 27 (shootings) number to be zero? Absolutely we would. I will say persons who comply with lawful requests from police officers never, ever get shot.''

The no-bills that followed reviews of shootings by 29 Houston Police Department officers maintained a decadelong streak of more than 300 officers being cleared by grand juries in shootings stretching back to March of 2004. (The 29 cases were reviewed last year, but some occurred in other years.)

In the 2004 case, a grand jury charged HPD officer Arthur Carbonneau with criminally negligent homicide following the November 2003 shooting of Eli Escobar, an unarmed 14-year-old who was fatally shot in the face as Carbonneau and another officer held him down.

Last year, one HPD officer was cleared by a grand jury on May 29 of two shootings that occurred nearly a year apart. Officer Jason Rosemon shot and killed a violent, but unarmed, mentally ill U.S. Navy veteran who neighbors insist had his hands up; the officer also was cleared of wounding a man who fired at police. Rosemon was one of two HPD officers cleared last year by grand juries for their roles in two shootings.

Hunt noted that each police shooting is investigated internally by HPD as well as the DA's Civil Rights Unit, which presents each case in which a civilian was injured or killed to a grand jury. In addition, Police Chief Charles McClelland forwards the results of HPD's shooting investigations to the FBI for review, Hunt said.

"Not one shooting that we have had has the FBI said there appears to be a violation of civil rights," Hunt said.

New pursuit policy

McClelland declined to comment on the HPD grand jury clearances last year. However, in the wake of protests after a grand jury on Dec. 23 cleared an HPD officer in the shooting of Jordan Baker, he said HPD is developing a new policy on foot pursuits. Officer Juventino Castro last January pursued Baker, who was unarmed, into an alley behind a shopping center and shot him because he claimed Baker was reaching for a weapon.

"We will continue to evaluate our policies and training in an attempt to prevent these types of incidents in the future," McClelland said in a statement.

In another step to increase accountability, county commissioners recently approved spending $1.9 million in seized assets to equip Houston police officers and county sheriff's deputies with body cameras.

Surviving family members of those shot by police expressed little confidence in the grand jury process.

"In Harris County, if you have a police officer going before a grand jury, they're going to be no-billed," said Kathy Self, whose younger brother was shot and killed by an HPD officer in December 2011. "I don't think the case even gets looked at. It slides right through."

Yolanda Smith, longtime executive director of the NAACP chapter in Houston, said prosecutors told her attorney that no witnesses were called by a grand jury that cleared an HPD sergeant in the fatal shooting of Blake Pate, 24, in August 2012. In a deposition, the officer said he shot Pate, who was unarmed, after Pate lunged at him following an automobile accident on Christmas night.

Hired an attorney

Joseph Santellana, who owns a Houston construction company, has hired a criminal attorney to investigate the November 2013 shooting death of his son and hopes to present a case against the officer to another grand jury. Texas law allows grand jurors to inquire into indictable offenses they are aware of, or those brought to them by prosecutors or any other "credible person."

Jonathen Santellana, 17, was sitting in his car outside a Houston-area apartment complex when an off-duty Navasota police officer approached the car and pulled a gun on the youth and a female passenger. Believing the officer was an armed robber, the youth put his car in reverse to flee and was shot by the officer, his father said.

"The guy approached my son's car in plain clothes, and he didn't pull up in a police car so there would be no way, whether it was a 17-year-old kid or an adult, to believe it was an actual police officer," Santellana said. "He tried to put his car in reverse and leave because he thought he was being robbed at gunpoint."

The officer was no-billed last August.

"It's a win-win situation for a police officer every time," Santellana said of the grand jury review. "Basically, they're investigating themselves. We had high hopes the officer would be charged because of the way things went the day of the incident, that he was in the wrong.''

A criminal justice expert expressed concern about the large number of exonerations.

"The difficulty is that it leaves a perception that police are error-free in their actions, and we all know that's not necessarily true," said Larry Karson, a professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Houston-Downtown. "It also says it's quite possible the standards for negligent homicide are set too high."

Robb Fickman, past president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, said special prosecutors should take over police investigations because of the appearance of a conflict of interest when prosecutors present evidence in cases involving police.

"The only way to fix the system is for somebody other than the District Attorney's Office to investigate and present these cases to a grand jury," said Fickman, who has practiced law for 31 years. "Because as long as prosecutors continue to present cases to a grand jury in a neutral fashion, we will see cop after cop be no-billed."

Dangers officers face

Hunt, the police union president, said a recent shooting illustrated the dangers officers often face if they wait to see whether someone is armed.

When Houston police responded to a Dec. 18 call of a suicide in progress by an armed suspect, the officer shot the man when he suddenly reached into his waistband. Hunt said the officer never saw the man actually handle the gun but found it in his hand when he went to handcuff him after shooting him. The gunshot was not life-threatening, and the man was sent to a local hospital for treatment.

"In that case, had the officer waited to see a gun, the officer probably would have seen the gun as it was shooting him," Hunt said.

James Pinkerton is a Houston Chronicle reporter assigned to cover police administration and criminal justice issues. His other assignments for the Chronicle have included covering immigration and running a news bureau in the Rio Grande Valley. During decades of daily newspaper experience, he has worked for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the Austin American Statesman and the Brownsville Herald.